Fish Eyes: A Book You Can Count On (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

LOIS EHLERT has created many picture books, including Leaf Man, Pie in the Sky, In My World, Growing Vegetable Soup, Planting a Rainbow, and the bestselling Waiting for Wings. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

PreSchool-Grade 1-- Stylized fish shapes in flat, razzle-dazzle colors against a dark blue background float across the pages from one to ten, accompanied by one little dark fish who keeps the count going. Cutout circles at the eyes reveal colors on succeeding pages. The slight text, occasionally in rhyme, introduces adjectives through the count, and tries to set a context of wish-fulfillment. It's a slick production, attempting several concepts at once--numbers, shapes, colors, imagining, addition to a value of one--but it doesn't quite hang together, and its result is a little breathless. MacDonald and Oakes' Numblers (Dial, 1988) also uses strong color and stark form to present visually the concepts of increasing quantity and transformations, but in a more thoughtful and well-integrated way, with movement inherent in the design. Another little dark fish, Lionni's Swimmy (Pantheon, 1963), has a more meaningful underwater exploration, incorporating the idea of changing appearances into the story. --Karen Litton, London Public Libraries, Ontario, Canada
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.